1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a card processing system and a card processing method for paying, for example a toll of a toll road using a prepaid IC card.
2. Description of Related Art
At present, a magnetic type prepaid card (hereinafter referred to as a magnetic card) available widely in the market can be obtained with ease anonymously and therefore, is highly convenient for users and is used widely as a conventional type toll collection system in a toll road.
Further, an Electronic Toll Collection System (ETC system) has been introduced into toll roads. In this ETC system, an on board unit is installed on a vehicle and when an ETC card is inserted into this on board unit, the on board unit communicates with an antenna installed in a tollbooth and the entrance or exit process is executed. Thus, a vehicle is able to pass through a tollhouse without stopping in most cases.
On the other hand, in recent years, in transportation facilities such as railways, non-contact IC cards equipped with a function to communicate with an automatic ticket examiner in weak wave are in use and contributing to the alleviation of congestion in recent years.
In such circumstances, change from magnetic card to IC cards and furthermore, regarding IC cards, common use of ETC cards and non-contact IC cards is inevitable and there are such problems as described below in this case.
That is, magnetic prepaid cards used in a conventional toll collection system always take a risk of illegal rewriting of monetary information and other data and enhancement of security is strongly demanded.
Further, the ETC system is operated in mix with a conventional toll collection system and adversely affected by the low throughput of the conventional toll collection system, the throughput of ETC vehicles is not increased. Accordingly, the congestion is not relieved sharply and it is hardly said the convenience of users is promoted. Further, if any error is generated in the ETC processing, the further drop of throughput results and the users' convenience may possibly become further worse.
Further, because it is possible to use a non-contact IC card using weak radio wave as a simple card, differing from a set contract with an on board unit like ETC, vehicles entered into a toll road may possibly make an illegal deed to exchange IC cards each other.